The Things They Ask Her To Do
Thursday Noon wants to be wrapped in cellophane,
pink or blue, but not clear to any other color;
beats a little strange here.
She wraps him tightly before leaving the room
to watch The Bold and the Beautiful, wondering
who Brooke is married to this week.
Just Passing Through asked to live in a cage
in her basement for the three hottest weeks of summer,
but she rejected putting his life in danger.
He cried like a slave almost always does, but
this time she hadn't even done anything to him.
Honestly Not A Lesbian likes for her to dress up
in a kitty outfit, furry ears on her head, face
invisible beneath the glued whiskers and blue paint.
Every Other Friday has a penchant for ants:
she puts something, anything sticky and sweet
between his legs and lets them crawl to his pleasure
until their hour is up.
She rings her bell like she imagines a pyschiatrist might;
Dr. Austin, she'd call him, just like that failing city
that she couldn't help but miss. Is she the opposite
of a psychiatrist, she wonders, as she places a heeled foot
gently on the floor between Down Low's fingers.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Junkyard Quotes 1-6, Week 11
"convent threshold" - written on the board in one of my classes
"Are Gabriel's feet on fire?" - the class discussing Dante Rosetti's Annunciation
"I don't need to close the door to say 'fuck.'" - overheard in the hallway
"Sweet-Tooth Laura" - also written on the board in class, wondered if this could be used in conjunction with a poem like the one we workshopped for Ashley on prostitutes just because that's what it instantly made me think of.
"WARNING! Female sexuality" - written on the board in Studies in Women's Lit
"For 15 years I had a house. I had the house, but really it had me." - Kathy Fagan at her reading
"Are Gabriel's feet on fire?" - the class discussing Dante Rosetti's Annunciation
"I don't need to close the door to say 'fuck.'" - overheard in the hallway
"Sweet-Tooth Laura" - also written on the board in class, wondered if this could be used in conjunction with a poem like the one we workshopped for Ashley on prostitutes just because that's what it instantly made me think of.
"WARNING! Female sexuality" - written on the board in Studies in Women's Lit
"For 15 years I had a house. I had the house, but really it had me." - Kathy Fagan at her reading
Friday, March 12, 2010
Free Entry 1, Week 10
I never mastered the art of holding an umbrella:
tilting it back, against the right shoulder
is fashionable but impractical in the case
of actual rain. Leaning it forward, brim
lower than brow, inhibits forward vision,
not to mention waxes rude to those who
I might pass, avoiding the grassy mud.
Holding it upright seems most practical,
though that offers its own difficulties
and perversions to our uniquely human hands:
to hold it on the left side, or the right?
To push it high above the scalp or pull down
in a grandmother's good-girl pat?
To lean the handle against the mple,
or push it out in any of the three dimensions
but still close enough to keep you dry.
Not bone dry because bones aren't dry,
at least not until they're bare, without
the gigantic organ holding them in
their rightful places to force us to walk
in the rain with our umbrellas.
My lover once told me that we're all just
mobile skeletons with brains, which
I told him was gross. When he had his
eye surgery, he begged to show me that
video of the laster penetrating his cornea
while he laid, unmoving, beneath the gaze
of the light shaped like an umbrella.
tilting it back, against the right shoulder
is fashionable but impractical in the case
of actual rain. Leaning it forward, brim
lower than brow, inhibits forward vision,
not to mention waxes rude to those who
I might pass, avoiding the grassy mud.
Holding it upright seems most practical,
though that offers its own difficulties
and perversions to our uniquely human hands:
to hold it on the left side, or the right?
To push it high above the scalp or pull down
in a grandmother's good-girl pat?
To lean the handle against the mple,
or push it out in any of the three dimensions
but still close enough to keep you dry.
Not bone dry because bones aren't dry,
at least not until they're bare, without
the gigantic organ holding them in
their rightful places to force us to walk
in the rain with our umbrellas.
My lover once told me that we're all just
mobile skeletons with brains, which
I told him was gross. When he had his
eye surgery, he begged to show me that
video of the laster penetrating his cornea
while he laid, unmoving, beneath the gaze
of the light shaped like an umbrella.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Improv/Imitation 2, Week 9
"The tongue of a blue whale weighs
as much as an elephant,"
but nothing weighs as much as a blue
whale that has swallowed ten ships,
including that rusted plank that became
of Odysseus's ship and men, trying like
a child rushing through hard water
to return to Ithaca.
What if no one was waiting when he got
back to that island of which he was once
king, no one in all of the palace or town
below it to greet him with a hero's
welcome, especially not the son he
abandoned, whose own sailings took
him to the city of Sparta, where the 300--
or was it 30,000--tried yet again to defeat
their common enemy. No enemy is common.
They all take what is not theirs and streak
the sky with wedded bands of smoke and fire
that pound onto the ground with the force
of the elephants that Hannibal rode into
his greatest battles, winning with their
might. But he may not have won if the
enemy, the uncommon enemy, had ridden
on blue whales, whose tongues weigh
as much as an elephant.
as much as an elephant,"
but nothing weighs as much as a blue
whale that has swallowed ten ships,
including that rusted plank that became
of Odysseus's ship and men, trying like
a child rushing through hard water
to return to Ithaca.
What if no one was waiting when he got
back to that island of which he was once
king, no one in all of the palace or town
below it to greet him with a hero's
welcome, especially not the son he
abandoned, whose own sailings took
him to the city of Sparta, where the 300--
or was it 30,000--tried yet again to defeat
their common enemy. No enemy is common.
They all take what is not theirs and streak
the sky with wedded bands of smoke and fire
that pound onto the ground with the force
of the elephants that Hannibal rode into
his greatest battles, winning with their
might. But he may not have won if the
enemy, the uncommon enemy, had ridden
on blue whales, whose tongues weigh
as much as an elephant.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Improv/Imitation 1, Week 9
"It is late on the evening of September 25, 2006,"
and tambourines beat less loudly against my skull then,
making real music to dance to rather than pounding like
my mother's heavy footsteps above my basement room.
Can you hear me now, or was that Are You There, God;
It's me, Margaret, a novel I once taught to our
Christian Fellowship Club when it was my turn to preach,
a feat not unlike a woman wearing pants or unfastening
her hair to dare speak all the details of rebellion
that Margaret Atwood taught us in our formative years:
those of early college, when, as child-adults, we hung
against the dripping words of writers like our own
Bible, one without scripture but shouting sarcasm in
the fisted hands of Margaret Atwood herself.
Is Margaret Atwood the same who wrote to God all those
years ago, those years before impressionism overtook my
mind and turned me against men like Offred's mother,
when my eyes so easily turned to the Man for his answer
to every question that anyone could have asked aloud?
Imagine how different such a book would read now:
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret Atwood
and tambourines beat less loudly against my skull then,
making real music to dance to rather than pounding like
my mother's heavy footsteps above my basement room.
Can you hear me now, or was that Are You There, God;
It's me, Margaret, a novel I once taught to our
Christian Fellowship Club when it was my turn to preach,
a feat not unlike a woman wearing pants or unfastening
her hair to dare speak all the details of rebellion
that Margaret Atwood taught us in our formative years:
those of early college, when, as child-adults, we hung
against the dripping words of writers like our own
Bible, one without scripture but shouting sarcasm in
the fisted hands of Margaret Atwood herself.
Is Margaret Atwood the same who wrote to God all those
years ago, those years before impressionism overtook my
mind and turned me against men like Offred's mother,
when my eyes so easily turned to the Man for his answer
to every question that anyone could have asked aloud?
Imagine how different such a book would read now:
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret Atwood
Free Entry 2, Week 9
This is an exercise in found poetry, which I always enjoy. These are status updates from Facebook that I thought I might be able to tie together someday!
It's easy when you listen to the g'd up sound,
and I'm marinating in the sweet, sweet southern moon:
Mexico for the week.
Your face smells pretty good this morning; I have
eighth notes in me. Unfortunately, all of my keys
now rest at the bottom of Lake Harding.
No espresso today--dreamt the cops were after us
for a pool violation. Tomorrow comes today, so
join the war!
We managed to get kicked off of the college campus
twice and even receive a permanent ban, but don't
hit the slammer too hard!
Am I flaky, honestly? "She's the lady in red when
everybody else is wearing tan" is catchy.
You continue to wow me with your lack of ego
and excess of talent; I got what I wanted
and now I go to bed, contemplating the mysteries
of the universe and the dynamics of grilled cheese.
I can't wait to go scavenging through antiques.
It's easy when you listen to the g'd up sound,
and I'm marinating in the sweet, sweet southern moon:
Mexico for the week.
Your face smells pretty good this morning; I have
eighth notes in me. Unfortunately, all of my keys
now rest at the bottom of Lake Harding.
No espresso today--dreamt the cops were after us
for a pool violation. Tomorrow comes today, so
join the war!
We managed to get kicked off of the college campus
twice and even receive a permanent ban, but don't
hit the slammer too hard!
Am I flaky, honestly? "She's the lady in red when
everybody else is wearing tan" is catchy.
You continue to wow me with your lack of ego
and excess of talent; I got what I wanted
and now I go to bed, contemplating the mysteries
of the universe and the dynamics of grilled cheese.
I can't wait to go scavenging through antiques.
Free Entry 1, Week 9
He sang Ohhhhh-ohhhh, De-e-eath while she
went down in the river to pray, without an inclination
as to whom the crown might belong once they reached
the end of that long, winded highway that neither really
cared to travel: one a treasure trove of marketable madness
sent to his speaker like a hawk to a flame with banjos bopping
in the background to his once playful now solemn tune,
the other a baby dressed in white but sullen beneath
with browns and reds of demons that danced around her,
all the while she singing how she'll fly away, oh glory.
Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't the sinner
praise God while he lives in glory down here on earth?
and what makes the righteous so assured of their righteousness
other than a spinning spine beneath the skin that whistles
"You're right, you're right"? All others are gone
in the cotton and the corn, as they say.
went down in the river to pray, without an inclination
as to whom the crown might belong once they reached
the end of that long, winded highway that neither really
cared to travel: one a treasure trove of marketable madness
sent to his speaker like a hawk to a flame with banjos bopping
in the background to his once playful now solemn tune,
the other a baby dressed in white but sullen beneath
with browns and reds of demons that danced around her,
all the while she singing how she'll fly away, oh glory.
Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't the sinner
praise God while he lives in glory down here on earth?
and what makes the righteous so assured of their righteousness
other than a spinning spine beneath the skin that whistles
"You're right, you're right"? All others are gone
in the cotton and the corn, as they say.
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